A Poissy engine-parts company that built small endurance racers, won its class at Le Mans in 1949 and closed its racing team in 1958.
Etablissements Monopole was a Poissy company founded in 1920 that supplied engine components to carmakers. Its Ecurie Monopole team raced small endurance cars from 1947 until it closed at the end of 1958, and the name survives in Africa through a former licensee.
Etablissements Monopole was a French manufacturer of engine parts in Poissy, outside Paris, and it also built and raced small-displacement endurance cars. Through its Ecurie Monopole team the company raced from 1947 until the team was closed at the end of 1958.
What did Etablissements Monopole make?
Etablissements Monopole made pistons, piston rings, valves and other parts for automobile engines. It was started in 1920 in Poissy with American investment capital, and by 1944 its clients included Peugeot and Citroen. The company was managed at the start by a Mr. Guerne.
Its name is usually abbreviated Ets. Monopole, although Monopole-Poissy appeared in the company's own literature. The business later changed shape through mergers. A deal with the Floquet sparkplug company produced the name Floquet Monopole, and the firm also absorbed valve maker Jeudy, gudgeon pin maker Marty and piston maker Nova.
A parts maker that raced small endurance cars, won its class at Le Mans in 1949 and closed its team in 1958.
Who controlled Monopole and who ran its racing?
Andre Hemard acquired majority ownership of Monopole in 1937-38. In 1944 he installed his son-in-law Jean de Montremy as chief executive, a post Montremy held while the company's racing took shape. Montremy had earlier worked for the aeronautical parts maker Bronze-Avia.
Hemard's sons had their own roles in the firm. Jean Hemard served as production director, and Pierre Hemard also worked for the company. Both later raced Monopole cars alongside Montremy, who was their brother-in-law.
Montremy had studied at Reims, where he spent time at Circuit Reims-Gueux and developed a taste for racing. As chief executive he saw competition as a way to test the company's products and promote them. He chose the small-displacement endurance classes because conditions there were closest to what the parts would face in normal road use.
What was the first Monopole racer?
The first racing Monopole used the 1,090 cc inline four-cylinder engine and chassis of a Simca 8, clothed in lightweight aluminium bodywork. Montremy designed it himself. It made its debut at Reims on 6 July 1947, where it finished seventh, and two more Simca-Monopoles were built in 1948.
The successors kept the Simca 8 engine but replaced the original chassis with lightweight custom-built units. These cars raced through 1948 and 1949. The Le Mans debut of a Monopole came in 1949, when Montremy and Dussous took the car home twelfth overall and first in the S 1.1 class.
The team's racing was partly a family affair. Montremy and his brothers-in-law appeared in the cars many times, and they raced at Le Mans in 1950, 1951 and 1953 among other events. Further drivers were the Chancel brothers, Pierre and Robert, along with Pierre Flahault, Yvonne Simon and Jean Vinatier.
How did Monopole build its Panhard-based racers?
From 1950 the company built racers around Panhard components. Panhard supported teams with parts and technical help rather than running its own cars, and Monopole used the air-cooled flat twin designed by Louis Delagarde with the front-wheel drive chassis from the Panhard Dyna X, adapted for the job.
The first of these cars, the X84, used the Dyna X engine, chassis and running gear inside streamlined custom bodywork. Its GM600 S engine displaced 610 cc and developed 22 CV (16 kW) at 4000 rpm in standard tune. The X84 first appeared at Le Mans in 1950, where the number 52 car finished twenty-second overall.
Pierre Bourdereau designed a very compact barquette, and its full-width ponton-style bodywork earned the nickname tank, a name used for other Monopoles too. Monopole named its Panhard-based racers after the Dyna X series numbers, so the X85, X86 and X87 each followed a donor model.
The X85 was the series number for the Dyna 110. It kept the 610 cc displacement of the X84, but its GM600 SS2 unit gave 28 CV (21 kW) at 4,800 rpm in the factory setting. A Monopole X85 barquette, numbered 60, appeared at the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans, driven by Hemard and de Montremy.
The X86 came from the Dyna 120 with a 745 cc engine in two tunes. The standard GM750 SS3 produced 32.6 CV (24.0 kW) at 5000 rpm, and the Sprint version produced 33.5 CV (24.6 kW) at 5000 rpm. The X87 from the Dyna 130 used an 848 cc engine, rated at 38 CV (27.9 kW) at 5000 rpm in standard form.
How did Panhard take over the racing role in 1953?
Panhard became directly involved in racing in 1953 under team director Etienne de Valance, producing three models for its own efforts: the X88, X89 and VM5. Designer Marcel Riffard worked on the early cars, and later Pierre Durand took over the design work for the VM5.
The X88 was a unique design built only for racing. It had a light alloy chassis, Duralinox bodywork and an early 610 cc Panhard twin. The X89 used the larger 848 cc Panhard twin, while the VM5 barquettes had 848 cc flat-twins in tubular chassis with fully independent suspension.
Panhard withdrew from direct racing in 1956, following the 1955 Le Mans accident. Ecurie Monopole became Panhard's officially supported team, and staff and racing cars moved to its base at Acheres. Personnel for the team numbered just eight, and some entrant lists record it as Societe Monopole Course.
What was the Duval Monopole?
The Duval Monopole was a modified Simca Monopole, chassis DS 002, which began to appear on tracks around 1951. Its owner and driver, Pierre Duval, fitted it with a 2.0 L V8 engine from the Ford Vedette in place of the original power unit.
Ford sold the Vedette model, and the Poissy factory where it and its flathead engine were built, to Simca in 1954. The Duval car kept racing after the change, and its results include a tenth-place finish in the Portugal Grand Prix.
The car also appeared in the 1955 GP des Frontieres, where Pierre Duval and the Duval Monopole V8 finished seventh.
How did Monopole cars perform beyond Le Mans?
Monopole cars raced widely in France, at events from the 12 Hours of Paris to the 4 Hours of Forez. Among the best results were a class win in the 12 Hours of Paris in 1948 and a first in the S1.0 class at Forez in 1955, when Robert Chancel finished eighth overall.
At the 12 Hours of Paris in 1948, de Montremy and Dussous finished ninth and won the S 1.1 class, while another car driven by Guerne and Mangenot finished nineteenth. In 1950 the team of Lienard and Guerne finished eighth in the same race.
At the 12 Hours of Reims, Monopoles finished in several classes between 1953 and 1958. Yvonne Simon and Hemard came fourteenth in a Monopole Panhard in 1953, and the brothers Pierre and Robert Chancel posted seventh in 1956. In 1957 Pierre Chancel and Hemard finished twenty-fourth and took first in the GT1.0 class.
In 1958 three teams finished at Reims in the GT750 class, with van der Bruwaene and Lejourel first, Hemard and Beaulieux second and Vinatier and Masson third. Smaller events filled the calendar as well. Dussous took third in a 750 cc Monopole Panhard at the Coupe de Paris in 1954, and Pierre Duval finished seventeenth overall and first in the T2.0 class in 1955.
Other entries show the breadth of the programme. Simon and de Montremy finished tenth in a Panhard Monopole at the Bol d'Or in 1955, and Rene Cotton finished twenty-second in a 750 cc Monopole at the Tour de France in 1957. Hemard finished third at the 3 Hours of Pau in 1958, when the team of Pierre Chancel and Jean Vinatier took fourth.
What did Monopole win on track?
Monopole won both the Index of Performance and the eighteenth Biennial Cup in 1952, its third consecutive year of doing so. That made it the only manufacturer to achieve three such wins in a row. Its Le Mans results added class honours in 1949 and 1952.
| Year | Event | Result | Drivers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1947 | Reims Formula Libre | Seventh | Jean de Montremy |
| 1948 | 12 Hours of Paris | Ninth and first in S 1.1 | Montremy, Eugene Dussous |
| 1949 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Twelfth overall, first in S 1.1 | Montremy, Dussous |
| 1950 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Twenty-second overall | Montremy, Hemard |
| 1952 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Fourteenth, first in S750 | Hemard, Dussous |
| 1953 | Coupes du Salon | Thirteenth in a Monopole Panhard | Hemard |
| 1954 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Thirteenth | Hemard, Pierre Flahault |
| 1956 | GP de Rouen | Eighth overall, first in S750 | Pierre Hemard |
| 1957 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Eighteenth in a Panhard Monopole X89 | Pierre Hemard, Pierre Chancel |
| 1958 | 24 Hours of Le Mans | Seventeenth, the only Monopole to finish | Jacques Poch, Guy Dunand |
| 1958 | Trophee d'Auvergne | Seventeenth, first in GT750 | Jean Vinatier |
Why did the racing team close in 1958?
Ecurie Monopole had increasingly pursued GT events, because the shortage of sportscar races left fewer options. The decision to close the team was made at the end of the 1958 season, and in that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans only one Monopole finished, in seventeenth place.
Jose Carvallo de Oliveira, a Monopole technician and racing mechanic, asked Montremy for permission to build an open-wheeled Formula Junior car in late 1958. Its flat-twin engine and suspension followed the front-mounted, front-wheel drive layout of the sportscars. It was raced in 1959 and 1960 and then put into storage.
What became of the Monopole name?
The Perfect Circle Corporation of Hagerstown, Indiana, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dana Incorporated on 1 July 1963. Dana completed its acquisition of Floquet Monopole in 1978, and the Floquet Monopole name remained in use in Europe as late as the end of October 1995.
By early 1998 the name had been dropped and the division traded as Perfect Circle. A former licensee bought the name rights from Dana and set up in Fes, Morocco, as Floquet Monopole Industrie de Precision. Dana also sold the rest of its European parts divisions to Mahle, a sale completed on 9 March 2007.
